The first parliamentary inquiry report into sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools was launched in late 2016 by the Women and Equalities Committee. It included more than 70 submissions with a suite of 12 recommendations. Fast forward 5 years (post #metoo) and Sara Soma’s Everyone’s Invited (2021) social movement gathers over 50,000 testimonies, rousing further governmental responses and inquiries (this time by Ofsted 2020 and Estyn 2021).

With a growing number of children and young people speaking out, or being supported to speak out about their experience, this online event asks some searching questions, including:
• What is the role of research and research data amidst the rise of a viral and vociferous call-out culture?
• Who is responsible and able to respond to what is surfacing? Is everyone invited into the space of response-ability and preventative change? Who is included and excluded and how?
• What concepts are being used by academics, policy makers and others to define and respond to what is a complex intersectional, socio-structural, cultural, affective, and technologically mediated phenomenon (e.g. harassment; cyber-flashing; abuse; bullying etc)
• What might a collective and collaborative praxis for change and transformation look like for educational researchers working in the field of gender and sexual violence?